As hedge-fund mogul Steve Cohen prepares to cough up about $1.4 billion to settle criminal insider trading charges against his SAC Capital Advisors, investors who benefited from the crimes will likely be able to hold on to those profits, experts told The Post.

From 1999 through 2010 — when SAC was a “magnet for cheaters,” according to Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara — investors earned billions of dollars in profits as Cohen’s hedge funds produced 25 percent net annual returns.

Investors started pulling assets from SAC in earnest this year as prosecutors put the final touches on their probe of the Cohen juggernaut.

“The investors are passive and not involved in any of the things SAC is supposed to have done,” said Simon Lack, a former executive at JPMorgan responsible for investing in hedge funds. “It would be very difficult to penalize the investors.”

Prosecutors, according to reports, are close to settling with SAC for up to $1.4 billion — about 15 percent of Cohen’s $9 billion net worth.

Cohen has not been charged with any crimes and has denied the charges against SAC.

Cohen’s funds are staying open for business while the $6 billion in outside money that was invested in SAC at the beginning of 2013 is handed back by year end.

SAC’s profits were almost too good to be true. Gross returns — before Cohen took his cut — were more like 50 percent a year for the 12 years in question.

Not everyone thinks the investors should be totally off the hook.

“If an investor knew or had reasonable basis on which to believe that an enterprise is corrupt and the gains they were enjoying were ill-gotten, there are at least theoretical bases on which [prosecutors could] pursue their ill-gotten gains,” said the general counsel at a multibillion-dollar hedge fund. “But it’s hard to establish.”